Despite Assurances, Complex Factors Drive Up Tax Bills

Westchester County property owners, who were assured just before the November election that county taxes would not go up this year, were jolted this week by the news that their tax bills would indeed be rising -- by as much as 11.6 percent in one town.

To be sure, many realized there would be something of an increase. The day before New Year's Day, property owners had learned that as a result of the Board of Legislators' adjustments in County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke's budget, the overall county property tax would rise by 2.8 percent, to $337.7 million.

But this week the county Tax Commission apportioned the $337 million into bills for each of the county's 6 cities and 19 towns, and the size of the increases outraged taxpayers in towns like Harrison, Pelham, North Castle, Peekskill, Pound Ridge -- all of whose residents will see their tax bills rise by 8 percent or more. The 'Taking' of Pelham

"You almost feel like you want to secede, like Staten Island," said Paul A. Daronco, the Supervisor of Pelham, whose residents will pay 8.9 percent more in county taxes.

In North Castle, which embraces the hamlets of Armonk and North White Plains, the increase will be 8.7 percent. That means the average taxpayer will have to pay $96 a year more in county taxes, said John A. Lombardi, the town's Supervisor for 32 years.

"I would say there's a tremendous disappointment for the people here," he said. "The County Executive says there'd be no increases and now there's an 8 percent increase. We feel we've been taken."

Two localities, Mount Vernon and Cortlandt, will see their county tax rates drop.

The reason for the disparity is a complicated brew of changing property values, business relocations and the equalization rate, which the state sets for each town and city. Since each locality appraises its property at some percentage of the fair market value, the state sets an equalization rate, or multiplier, that is applied to the appraisal to bring it back up to what the state regards as market value. Methods Criticized

Many localities regard as unfair the equalization rate the state sets for adjusting assessments to full market value and have challenged their equalization rates. Stephen P. Tenore, chairman of the 17-member Board of Legislators, has called for an overhaul of the system to make taxes more equitable.

But a countywide reassessment is a Pandora's box that few politicians really want to touch. So for now Scarsdale will continue to assess its properties at roughly 4 percent of their value while Mount Kisco will assess properties at 40 percent of their value, and each will retain wildly divergent tax rates.

Harrison, where taxes this year will rise by 11.6 percent, was hurt by I.B.M.'s vacating of office space and other factors that diminished the town's overall property value. James Calandruccio, the town assessor, says the state's latest equalization rate has not been correctly adjusted to reflect some of these new realities. Remaining property owners, he says, will therefore have a greater burden. From Rich to Poor

Mr. Daronco, Pelham's Supervisor, said the county was forcing the smaller communities to pay for the problems of the declining cities. Yet, he said, those cities are receiving the bulk of county-financed services.

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"It's a redistribution of wealth," he said. "The people who have have to pay for the people who don't."

Westchester County imposes property taxes as well as a separate sales tax to help pay for its parks, hospital, jail and social services. In some localities, the county property tax bill is fast approaching that for the town, which typically provides police and fire protection, sanitation and road maintenance.

With taxes perhaps the most sensitive issue in the campaign, Mr. O'Rourke, a Republican seeking re-election, took an unusual step a few days before Election Day. He unveiled a skeleton budget that he said would result in no increase in the county's property tax levy in 1994. His opponent, Richard L. Brodsky, a Greenburgh Assemblyman, called the proposal a fiction and said Mr. O'Rourke's own figures indicated that, with county property values falling, the rate per $1,000 of market value would have to rise from 4.31 to 4.59 percent.

In December the Republican-controlled legislature branded Mr. O'Rourke' budget imprudent, arguing that he had not set aside enough money to pay for correcting a state mistake in pension financing nor enough to pay rebates to property owners who successfully claim they were overtaxed. Mr. O'Rourke vetoed the board's additions and on New Year's Eve, the legislators overrode all but one of his vetoes.

"I set down what I believed to be an adequate budget that contained no tax levy increase," Mr. O'Rourke said today. "What happened after that is history."

A result was that the final $954.8 million budget required the county to raise $337.7 million in property taxes, $9.2 million more than the previous year.. Each town and city pays a proportional share of that amount based on its share of the county's total property value of $72.9 billion. For example, Harrison, with $3.9 billion worth of total property must pay 5.44 percent of the tax bill, or $18.4 million.

That figure would only be a 4.5 percent increase over what Harrison paid last year. But Harrison's property values have declined because of the loss of I.B.M. office buildings, downward reassessments, and other factors, so the tax rate imposed on property owners must go up to make up the difference. Indeed, said Margaret Ciamarra, executive director of the Tax Commission, the town's overall tax rate is 11.6 percent higher than the tax rate last year.

The following are the county tax increases or decreases for each of Westchester's cities and towns:

Bedford, up 3.16 percent; Cortlandt, down 6.12; Eastchester, up 6.79; Greenburgh, up 2.7; Harrison, up 11.56; Lewisboro, up 2.25; Mamaroneck, up 3.4; Mount Kisco, up 6.4; Mount Pleasant, up 7.3; Mount Vernon, down 4.0; New Castle, up 6.3; New Rochelle, up 2.9.

North Castle, up 8.7; North Salem, up 1.8; Ossining, up 5.2; Peeksill, up 8.3; Pelham, up 8.9; Pound Ridge, up 8.1; Rye City, up 6.6; Rye Town, up 6.6; Scarsdale, up 2.7; Somers, up 1.4; White Plains, up 3.2; Yonkers, up 5.6; Yorktown, up 2.3.

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A version of this article appears in print on January 21, 1994, on Page B00005 of the National edition with the headline: Despite Assurances, Complex Factors Drive Up Tax Bills. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe